


crystal clear

by winternet (honeyeji)



Category: Aespa (Band)
Genre: Confessions, F/F, Fluff, Girls Kissing, Idol AU, Internal Monologue, Mutual Pining, ningselle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28073730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyeji/pseuds/winternet
Summary: Aeri confesses on the rooftop of their dorm.
Relationships: Ning Yizhuo | Ningning/Uchinaga Eri | Giselle
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	crystal clear

**Author's Note:**

> my first aespa fic! woohoo!

Aeri likes to sit up on the rooftop of their dorm. The view is nice, and it's refreshing to sit outside and think. Clear her head.

The stairwell door opens, and Aeri turns her head at the sound, curious. Yizhuo waves at her.

"Knew you'd be here," Yizhuo says, and she plops down, next to Aeri, on the dusty old table there, left by former owners. Minjeong is adamant about eating on the roof for a nice picnic soon, but it's too cold outside. "Winter, it's winter!" Aeri had said, and they all cracked into laughter.

"It's cold," Aeri says, after a while. The blinking city lights look beautiful from their view. Once you get high up enough, it feels like you can touch the sky. "You should go inside."

"I should say the same to you," Yizhuo says, her eyebrows raised. So they sit there, the wind biting at their faces and ears. Aeri's ears are so red, and so are Yizhuo's.

"I'm glad we debuted together," Aeri says, ignoring how shaky her voice is. "You're my best friend, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

Yizhuo makes this pleased sound and scoots closer to Aeri. Their legs are touching, and Aeri is so, so nervous.

"And... and I hope we achieve a lot as Aespa," Aeri says.

"Me too," Yizhuo says, in her tiny voice. Yizhuo has such cute Korean speaking. Aeri wraps her arms around their maknae, and they shiver together.

Aeri keeps psyching herself out of speaking after that. She can't seem to string together a sentence without it falling and breaking, million of letters scattering and rolling out of place. Like cheap pearl necklaces in movies, ones that fall, and break, beads bouncing across the floor. Aeri imagines little Korean alphabet letters bouncing across the rooftop, falling off the side, and hitting a pedestrian. 

Aeri once read an urban legend that if you drop a penny from the top of the Empire State Building, you'll kill the person that gets hit by it. Aeri thinks it might not be an urban legend. Pennies aren't heavy, or really, any coin for that matter, but the way it hurtles, back towards Earth, like a comet or meteoroid or asteroid (Aeri can't remember which actually falls to Earth, which meanders around the galaxy, and which streaks past Earth instead of hitting it), feels like a different kind of painful.

"Look at the moon," Yizhuo says, and points towards the sliver of a moon. It's really bright tonight, cutting through the night sky. 

"It looks really pretty," Aeri says, but she's not really looking at the moon. Yizhuo catches her gaze and smiles. Her cheeks are pink, and probably cold to the touch. Aeri doesn't want to mess any of this up.

"Jimin's probably worried," Aeri says, hating how she sounds when she says it. "And Minjeong said she's making dessert." Minjeong found a recipe for a rice cooker pancake online, so she's making one right now. Jimin keeps eating the whipped cream Minjeong specifically bought for the pancake.

"Do you really wanna go back down?" Yizhuo asks, so seriously, and Aeri just looks at her. _No,_ she thinks. _I don't want to go back down._

The thing with having foreign members in an idol group (which, Aeri wonders if she's _foreign_ foreign. She's half Korean, she can speak Korean... does it really make her somewhat of an outcast when it comes to Minjeong and Jimin?) is that they can only speak Korean to actually understand each other. Aeri can't speak Japanese or English with Yizhuo, nor can Yizhuo speak Chinese with Aeri. It's only Korean that their languages have in common, and there's always going to be a degree of uncertainty, of mistranslation, of furrowed eyebrows, and of "can you repeat that?"

Aeri has tried before to tell Yizhuo she likes her, really likes her, like... like-like her, and Yizhuo just grins and says I like you too in her tiny voice, so inconsequential, and they go back to singing or practicing or even making a TikTok. Aeri has always been pretty confident, but with Yizhuo, there's familiar shyness that floods her personality. It makes everything very different.

"Yizhuo," Aeri says slowly, trying to make it sound perfect.

"Aeri," Yizhuo teases, in that same, slow tone. Seoul's nightlife reflects in her eyes.

"You're... uh," Aeri plays with her fake fingernails, picking at her thumb's sticky jeweled fingernail. Fake fingernails always mess her up, either getting caught in her hair or something, or just the length of it... Aeri has used fake fingernails before, and it's just weird. Like moving the couch by a few inches. It's roughly in the same place, but you can feel the difference.

"C'mon, Giselle," Yizhuo says, using her stage name with a tiny smile. "Say it."

"I like you," Aeri says quietly. But she's too quiet, and she can see Yizhuo's confused expression morph. Yizhuo's mouth opens, probably to say something like "what?" or "huh?"

"I like you a lot," Aeri says, as loud as she can without disturbing the nice quiet silence of the night. "Like... well, like a crush. Yizhuo, I have a crush on you. I like you so much."

Aeri stands up suddenly, her hand on the back of her neck. She really doesn't know what to say now. Because what do you say once you've confessed? What are Aeri's dialogue options?

Yizhuo looks up at her, her eyes enormous, like a cartoon character. Aeri likes to think that Yizhuo isn't part of a real-life, in her own magical reality. Alternatively, in the real-life reality part, Yizhuo would be a great voice actor or a model.

Yizhuo's hand snatches Aeri's, so fast, and Aeri looks at it, Yizhuo's fake fingernails just as sparkly and jeweled, then looks at Yizhuo. There's this grace period, this slow moment, where the light hits everything right, like Cupid slapped a dreamy filter over this moment, like a real romance movie. And Aeri doesn't even watch romance movies all that much. The last movie she saw was Deadpool, for God's sake. The romance in that isn't the kind of soft, dreamy, Instagram filter romance that Yizhuo likes. Deadpool romance is... weird and desperate and all-consuming and yes, maybe Aeri might have a bit of that weird, all-consuming romance, but that's unimportant as of now.

Because Yizhuo is standing up and leaning in and kissing her. 

Surprise! It certainly was for Aeri, who is... her brain isn't really working enough to chug out a feeling because there's overwhelming happiness and all those good brain chemicals rushing and adrenaline is at work, and everything is so crazy and beautiful and wow.

So Aeri kisses her back. 

When they pull away, Yizhuo is smiling so bright, eyes _twinkling_ and sparkling, and Aeri is smiling too because this is her wildest dream. Dreams really do come true.

"I like you too," Yizhuo blurts. "A lot."

 _This_ is perfect. Because Yizhuo is just so perfect and pretty. Aeri is just so happy, even though her hands are icy cold and her lips are probably cold and chapped and kinda un-kissable but the perfect moment, her perfect moment, is perfect because of Yizhuo. Her existence makes everything exponentially better. And that's not an urban legend. That's a fact.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in one sitting which is definitely off-brand for me, but hopefully, you liked it!  
> kudos and comments are very appreciated :)  
> [twitter!](https://twitter.com/honeyeddeong)


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